In January 2019, I filmed in Rosslyn chapel for America Unearthed – a historical investigative series on Discovery’s Travel channel presented by Scott Wolter. After the production crew had packed up for the evening, I decided to roam around Rosslyn with my iPhone and film an exclusive Templar Knight guided tour just for you.

Now that America Unearthed is broadcasting in the United States, I’m happy to share this video with you. Excuse the grainy quality but the light was not on my side. Nevertheless, for those of you eager to investigate the links between the Knights Templar and Rosslyn, I hope this will give you some insights. Feel free to ask me more questions.

The intrepid Scott Wolter has been back on American TV screens once more with his incredible investigative series America Unearthed. I was honoured to be asked to hook up with Scott in Scotland to unearth clues that might prove the Templars got to the New World with their treasure!

We spent a weekend doing some historical detective work around Rosslyn chapel and then Wemyss Caves – a dangerous subterranean world up the coast. To find what we were seeking there, I had to make a very undignified entrance into the bowel of the cave by very literally crawling on my belly. But it was worth it!

I’m asked all the time what the Templars did with their treasure. Some believe the knights escaped southwards to what is now Portugal and were protected by the king in that country who re-branded the Templars as the Order of Christ.

Others believe the Templars went northwards to Scotland and were shielded by Scottish families who not only had connections to the brotherhood but may also have been descendants of Jesus Christ. From Scotland, the theories run, the treasure may have found its way along Viking routes to the Americas.

And then there are those who say the treasure either never existed or had been depleted by the time the Templars were crushed in the year 1307. What I can safely say to all parties is that the case is not closed.

The story of the Knights Templar is undoubtedly fact woven with fiction and speculation but contrary to what some wiseacres think, it’s not that easy to disentangle the history from the mystery. Many often asserted facts are hearsay and destructive rumours from medieval chroniclers – while many apparent conspiracy theories can possess a germ of truth.

In short – enjoy America Unearthed on the trail of the Knights Templar and blow a huge raspberry at the naysayers!

With Scott and the America Unearthed team in the crypt of Rosslyn chapel

If you look at the charges brought against the Knights Templar during their trials between 1307 and 1314, it’s difficult for the modern mind to make out whether they were being accused of undermining the church with false belief or were they just sorcerers. In other words, were the Templars magicians or heretics?

My understanding is that for most of the medieval period, what really scared bishops and popes was the threat of heresy. Magic was a nuisance and something to be snuffed out whenever it arose. But it didn’t pose the same kind of existential threat to the Catholic church that heresy did.

But what about all those witches that were burned I hear you cry?! Well, the witch burning craze didn’t really take off until very late in the Middle Ages – from the 15th century through to the 17th century. With the Templars, we’re looking at the 12th to the 14th centuries. And it was heresy that gave prelates the jitters.

Why? Because false belief (as the pope saw it) undermined the very foundations of the church. And it could also be alarmingly popular. The Cathar heresy in southern France threatened to topple church authority in the region and was the subject of a vicious and bloody crusade to suppress it.

But having stated that, magic did start to feature more in high profile accusations around the time of the Templar downfall. So, when King Philip of France (who suppressed the Templars) fell out big time with Pope Boniface VIII, he accused the pontiff of communing with demons. In fact, we can say that it was King Philip who started to bring magic and witchcraft into high level politics.

The king’s first minister was Guillaume de Nogaret and he was involved in a direct, physical attack on Pope Boniface. This shocked many medieval Christians so De Nogaret tried to justify his thuggery by accusing the pope of sorcery – as well as heresy against his own church. This was a dress rehearsal for the charges De Nogaret would bring against the Templars not long after.

Magic now moved from something weird that happened in villages to a standard accusation levelled by nobles against each other. Charges of high treason were often spiced up with stories of magical attacks on the king. And gradually, heresy and sorcery became intertwined in a new and deadly way.

We see this very obviously in the trial of the Templars. Because it doesn’t seem to have been enough to accuse the Templars of being heretics – spreading a false and evil version of Christianity. No – they also were charged with worshipping strange idols and engaging in sordid rituals.

And this seems to have cemented the new trend.

Two years after the Templars were totally crushed, Pope John XXII declared that witchcraft would be treated in the same way as heresy and could be investigated by the Inquisition.

Pope John XXII believed sorcerers were trying to kill him

Pope John actually believed there had been assassination attempts against himself through the use of magic. In one case, he accused an Italian noble of making a silver bust of him with an unlucky zodiac sign on it and the inscription “demon of the west”.

So I think in retrospect, it’s true to say that the Templars represented a turning point where the church and secular authorities began to more overtly mix heresy and magic together to concoct a stronger case against their enemies that they could sell to the public.

In 1307, arrest warrants were issued for the Knights Templar from the King of France on charges of heresy, sodomy and conspiracy. This led to the trial over a seven year period of many knights including the leaders of the Templar order. But what did most people think at the time – did serious commentators believe the Templars were guilty?

It’s often assumed that most people in what we call the Middle Ages were thick and gullible. But this is a bit of a Victorian fabrication. The educated classes, although in a minority, were more than capable of thinking critically – though within a very religious framework.

So, did clever people think the Knights Templar were guilty as charged? The answer is that opinions were surprisingly divided. In Italy, there was deep suspicion about the motives of Philip, King of France. One writer, Cristiano Spinola, raised his doubts shortly after the Templars were arrested.

And he was echoed by the poet Dante who doesn’t accuse the Templars of greed in his epic story, the Divine Comedy. But he does take a swing at King Philip, accusing him of avarice and asserting that the monarch had “lawlessly brought his greedy sails into the very Temple itself”.

Not everybody thought the Templars were guilty

The Florentine banker, adventurer and chronicler Giovanni Villani ascribed a whole series of catastrophes that befell the French royal family on Philip’s decision to seize the Templars and their wealth. When he heard that the last Templar grand master Jacques de Molay and other Templars had been burnt at the stake, he referred to it as the death of martyrs.

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author who wrote a collection of stories called the Decameron about a group of people escaping the plague and telling each other tales to pass the time. He wasn’t born when the Templars were arrested but his father had been in Paris at the time and Boccaccio was very interested in what had happened to the knights.

He saw it as a classic wheel of fortune tale. They had risen, succeeded and then fallen. Like many contemporary church chroniclers during the lifetime of the Templars, he was both fascinated and slightly repelled by the rapid enrichment of the Templars, which he thought must have corrupted their once lofty ideals.

Raymond Llull was a philosopher born in what is now Spain who had tried unsuccessfully to get the Knights Templar and the rival Knights Hospitaller to merge. The Templars had flatly rejected this idea. Llull had been a fan of the Templars but after his offer had been dismissed, he began to cheerlead for the French king.

What seems to have driven Llull is a strong desire for unity in the church. He came to regard the Templars as a disruptive influence and so maybe convinced himself that it was for the best that the knights went up in flames.

In February and March this year (2019), I was in Paris researching a TV programme and made two visits inside Notre Dame cathedral. It’s as unmissable a monument at the very heart of Paris as it has been for over 800 years. The massive medieval construction sits on an island in the middle of the river Seine dominating its surroundings.

Me inside Notre Dame cathedral in Paris

The tragic fire in Notre Dame

How terrible then to see Notre Dame in flames and largely destroyed by fire. Unfortunately, so many historic buildings suffer this fate yet many manage to rise again from the ashes.

However, even if the cathedral is repaired – it will not be the same as it once was. The gorgeous wooden screens I saw – dating back over 600 years – will have gone. Statues will have cracked. Stained glass windows will have been blown out. And the roof has already collapsed.

Wooden screen I doubt has survived

Notre Dame is a global catastrophe

This isn’t just a disaster for France. It’s a tragedy for all humanity. France gave us the Gothic style of church architecture that you can see all over the world. Notre Dame was the queen of Gothic cathedrals. It had a majestic elegance that inspired architects, masons and carpenters to strive to reproduce it in many cities.

Of course, for us Templar fans, Notre Dame has a poignancy as the last Grand Master of the Templars was burnt close by in the year 1307. Fans of the French novelist Victor Hugo will remember his hunchback character ringing the bells in the towers.

It’s a sad day and I leave you some images I took on my iPhone wishing I’d snapped a whole load more. But then I had no idea what was about to befall this grand structure.

The Knight Templar drama Knightfall has returned for a second season. It introduces us to a new character called Talus played by Mark Hamill. You’ll remember him as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. There’s a certain irony in that connection given that director George Lucas is believed to have modelled the Jedi in Star Wars on the Knights Templar.

So, here we have Hamill making his Templar debut and reviews have been broadly positive. It should give the series a much needed shot in the arm after a slightly shaky first season. There are a couple of characters (no prizes for guessing) that I’m glad got bumped off in season one and I certainly hope they stay that way.

Hamill’s character is called Talus and he’s a gristly and battle scarred old knight come to beat some sense into the main protagonist, Landry, and his associates. I’m hopeful that Hamill is going to lift Knightfall to new heights and, as ever, would value your feedback after viewing.

The Knights Templar lived by a strict rule book written in part by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. It governed their lives laying out how they should dress, conduct themselves, fight in battle and how often they prayed every day. The Templar rule had to be strictly adhered to but what did it actually state? Let’s take a closer look!

Somebody who claimed they wanted to be a Templar had to wait a while in order to see if they were genuine. Even once they were admitted, the Templar master would have the option of chucking them out if they weren’t going to make the grade

An initiation ceremony was held in complete secrecy where the Rule was read out to the new member

If you were too young, you might be barred until you were older. Then you could join in order to “wipe out the enemies of Christ from the Holy Land”

The Templars had permanent and temporary memberships. They also had a special class of membership for men who were married. But married men joining the Templars could not wear the sacred white mantle which indicated pureness and chastity

Obedience to superiors within the Order was non-negotiable. There was no room for individual action unsanctioned from above. The Templars acted as a united whole and nothing else. Those who were disobedient were compared to a “diseased sheep” that had to be removed from the flock

Battle armour had to be plain and simple with no gold and silver or colourful insignia or materials like silk. There was even a clause condemning “pointy shoes” – a fashion item in the Middle Ages

Hair and beards were to be kept short

The Templars prayed at several times during the day and ate together twice. Aside from reciting their prayers, silence was encouraged as in most monastic orders. And there was strong disapproval of laughter and jokes. If knights wanted something during dinner, they were encouraged to use hand signals instead of speaking

Some of the points in the Rule seem very odd to us now. Templars were not allowed to talk about their own faults or somebody else’s faults between each other. I assume this was to stop gossip or self-pity or bitching. Popular activities among secular knights like falconry and hunting were completely forbidden.

Any Templar expressing a wish to have the good things in life was to be given the worst:

If any permanent brother on account of a fault or on account of a feeling of pride shall desire to have beautiful and excellent things, for such a presumption he, without a doubt, deserves the most vile things.

Knights Templar were also forbidden to communicate with their parents unless they had permission. And any letters had to be read out loud to superiors. Associating with women was also frowned upon:

It is dangerous to befriend women because the old enemy has cast out many people from the right path of paradise by female companionship.

And if a Templar broke the rules, they would receive a light penance if they admitted their sin. But woe betide a Templar whose errors were uncovered by another brother and made known to the master. Then they would expect “severe discipline and correction”. One common punishment for transgressors was to be made to eat alone.

So intertwined were the knights that being told you had to have dinner away from your comrades was a terrible fate indeed!

(Trigger warning – this post does contain factual material that some blog followers may find contrary to their morals. I don’t wish to offend anybody but be aware I will be talking about the erotic philosophy of Aleister Crowley though not in too salacious depth.)

There are many organisations claiming to be Knight Templar in nature but one of the oddest in the 20th century had to be the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO for short). And this Templar sect’s most notorious devotee was the occultist Aleister Crowley, a bizarre individual who mixed sex, magic and religion – often for his own personal pleasure.

I first came across the name Aleister Crowley when, in 1980, I bought an album by the rock group Blizzard of Ozz. The lead singer of this short lived band was former Black Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne who shared with Crowley an interest in the darker side of the occult. The track is named after Crowley and it’s not one of Ozzy’s classic numbers but you get the gist of who Crowley was – a man so reviled and feared in Britain before the Second World War that the press referred to him as “the Beast” and “666”.

Born in 1875, Crowley came from a typical Victorian Christian family in the English Midlands. But he grew up at a time when there was a booming interest in magic and spiritualism. Seances and ouija boards were all the rage! What Crowley brought to this was bags of charisma and a stratospheric libido.

At the turn of the 20th century, two men – Karl Kellner (a chemist and Freemason) and Theodor Reuss (a German journalist and Freemason) – founded the Ordo Templi Orientis. When Crowley jumped on board, the original Masonic aims of this Templar group were diverted increasingly into his philosophy centred on the Greek word “Thelema”. In a nutshell, this pseudo-philosophy essentially stated – if you want to do something, then just do it.

The OTO mixed up elements of different religions with Masonic and magic symbology and obligatory references to ancient Egypt. Crowley developed a religious rite based heavily on the Catholic and eastern Orthodox mass declaring it was Gnostic in nature. Into this he inserted his trademark obsession with the erotic. Those who decided to join the OTO went through grades of membership similar to the Masonic structure but with a very different approach to moving up the chain.

Crowley recommended devotees eat special cakes into which might be baked semen, blood or excrement. Members moved up through degrees of membership to achieve an understanding of their identity and nature. This culminated in something termed The Hermit Triad where masturbation was taught as a former of magic. Members then advanced to mixing magic with other sex acts – in which, needless to say, Crowley was only too happy to participate.

Crowley justified this sexual behaviour claiming he was trying to return Christianity to its origin as a “solar-phallic religion”. Gnosticism is in part about releasing the spirit from the evil and corrupt physical world. Crowley – and OTO founder Reuss – believed that sex was a means of achieving this. Or as Reuss put it: the more sperm you eat, the more the manifestation of the Christ takes place within you.

This kind of logic led OTO to be described as – Spermo-Gnostics. Seriously dear readers, I’m not making this up!!

And the Templar connection to Aleister Crowley…

There isn’t space in this modest blog post to detail the whole belief system of Crowley and its ranging across all kinds of mythologies, religions and cultish practices. This is a mere taster. The Templar elements centred on initiation rites believed to reflect what the knights practiced – particularly alleged magic kisses on the body, defiling the crucifix and even sodomy.

Add to that the reported worshipping of a being referred to in the trials of the Templars as Baphomet. This was a devilish head of varying description. See my earlier blog posts for accounts from the early 14th century trials stating that this head sometimes spoke, gave orders or demanded obedience. Crowley lapped all that up!

What Crowley believed was that the Templars had indulged in a form of sex based magic while pretending to be defenders of the Catholic church. His OTO was carrying on that noble tradition.

Given the turbulent politics of our own times, I need to highlight that Crowley had views which were elitist and racist. He advocated the strict separation of racial groups and assigned rather crass stereotypes to them. In one almost laughable statement he claimed that Italians had “discarded the noble and beautiful toga for shoddy city clothes”.

He claimed – with zero scientific evidence – that hashish incited some races to murder whereas others (pointing at himself no doubt) became more philosophical under its influence. Crowley’s comments on India and the superiority of the British Empire are best left unprinted here. I could go on and on but you get the gist.

From Monday 11 March 2019, I will be appearing in every episode of Private Lives broadcasting on UKTV’s Yesterday channel in the UKTV and other channels around the world. Presented by Tracy Borman, curator of the Royal Palaces in England. I’ll be covering the private lives of six fascinating historical characters:

Princess Margaret – the late sister of the present Queen Elizabeth II. Margaret never stuck to the rules and caused constant scandal during her life. She’s featured in the Netflix series The Crown

Edward VIII – the king of England who gave up his throne to marry an American commoner and divorcee Wallis Simpson. The British Empire was rocked by Edward’s decision but what really lay behind it?

Napoleon – the diminutive French emperor who conquered most of Europe but was destroyed in his attempt to take Russia. His passionate affairs, tempestuous marriage and crushing defeat by the English exposed

Hitler – you’d think there was nothing left to say about Hitler but we delve into his fascination for teenage girls, frustrated artistic ambitions and the corrupt ambition that brought him down

Al Capone – the gangster known as Scarface terrorised Chicago but also had a great many admirers. The establishment seemed powerless to act as this street punk made vast profits from racketeering but eventually they got him on tax evasion

Peter the Great – the mightiest tsar that ever ruled Russia. A very odd character who loved dwarves, heavy drinking and women. His parties were notorious. His cruelty, even to close family, was highly disturbing.

The final season of Game of Thrones broadcasts in 2019. As you all know, it’s based on the works of novelist George R R Martin. His epic tale has drawn on a combination of medieval history, fairy tale fantasy and 20th century superheroes.

In one interview he talked of his love of old fashioned history telling (focussing on the blood and guts as opposed to the socio-economic analysis) as well as the works of J R R Tokein, who of course gave us The Lord of the Rings. The world inhabited by Game of Thrones is fictional but it operates according to rules that might not have seemed so alien to the Knights Templar.

Which begs the question – can we draw any comparisons between the Knights Templar and the world of Game of Thrones? I’d like to think we can – here’s a few observations…

Night’s Watch – a version of the Knights Templar?

Jon Snow – Templar?

The most obvious comparison with the Knights Templar is the Night’s Watch. Celibate, dedicated, battle hardened and guarding the most dangerous frontier for Westeros. They ceaselessly patrol the vast ice wall against the most terrifying of enemies. Regular soldiers would shun this commitment. The never ending duty in a miserable climate would have no appeal but the Night’s Watch lap it up!

For me, the best analogy with the Night’s Watch is those Templars who fought in Portugal and Spain when the Iberian peninsula was divided between a Muslim caliphate ruling the south and several smaller Christian crusader kingdoms in the north (the kingdoms of Westeros?).

The Christian king of Portugal, which only extended as far south as the river Mondego in the early 12th century, sent the Templars to run the borderlands between Christianity and Islam. There was no authority there – no king, no lords, no bishops.

In one battle at Tomar, in central Portugal, the Templars had to take on a vast Moroccan army that had stormed across Muslim southern Portugal to smash their position. It appeared like a blur on the horizon, thousands of scimitar wielding Saracens! After a spectacularly bloody battle, the Templars managed to see off the invading emir.

The Muslim emirates that once ruled Spain, Portugal and Sicily were very opulent and sat, literally, at the doorstep of Christian Europe. Their learning and luxury was envied by their rougher, more uncouth Christian neighbours. So, would it be a stretch to compare Dorne to these emirates?

Think I’m right in saying that the palace in Dorne is actually the Alcazar in Seville – a one time Muslim palace in Spain with heavy Moorish influences (elaborate tiles, horseshoe arches, fountain courtyards, etc).

Others, I should note, have compared the Night’s Watch to the Teutonic Knights, a Templar-like military order that fought in the Baltics, in north eastern Europe, against pagans and the Russians.

King’s Landing – an echo of Constantinople?

What medieval city could compare to the magnificence of King’s Landing?

King’s Landing? No – Constantinople!

Well, there’s an obvious candidate whose walls withstood every invasion force for 800 years. Behind those walls lay a city of golden domes, fine palaces and highly profitable trading. Its rulers were cynical, calculating and thoroughly devious manipulators with a taste for ornate court ritual and brilliant ostentation. Yes, step forward Constantinople – capital of the Byzantine empire!

But on reflection, King’s Landing doesn’t fit the bill for me. That description of Constantinople is far better suited to the rich, vain and duplicitous Qarth – known as the “Queen of Cities”. That was the sort of epithet attached to great Constantinople. The two cities were situated on trade routes and populated by merchants who use mercenaries to fight their battles. Their power was in some ways illusory and once the illusion was shattered, their end came quickly.

Faith of the Seven and the High Sparrow

Bernard of Clairvaux – High Sparrow?

Religious fanatics arose quite frequently in the Templar period. One very holy and severe man, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, exercised a massive influence over the Templars in their early years. He dressed in sack cloth and destroyed his own health with a regime of fasting and prayer. He was also utterly ruthless towards opponents. Potential High Sparrow?

While Bernard was a friend of the church and adviser to popes, some fanatics sought to overthrow the Catholic church. There was one group of Christians in France – the Cathars – who advocated poverty, abstinence, a strict diet, no priests and an abhorrence towards the official church’s greed. They sound pretty close to the Faith of the Seven!

Some Templars had family links to the Cathars and there’s been a degree of speculation over whether the knights had any sympathy with these heretics. The Cathars came to a particularly nasty end with the pope launching a crusade to wipe them out. Many were burnt at places like Carcassone in France.

Another analogy to these puritanical religious types could be the iconoclasts in Constantinople. In the 8th and 9th centuries after Christ, Christians in Constantinople were told to reject icons, statues and any colourful depictions of saints and the holy family. It was said that worship of these false images had brought doom and destruction to the city of Constantinople.

In the same way that the High Sparrow in Game of Thrones browbeats the elite into supporting him, the emperor in Constantinople was converted to this fanatical version of Christianity. With his approval, gangs went round smashing up churches and sacred images. Hmmmm…now that does sound like the grim zealots in Game of Thrones.

Iconoclasts attack holy images

Find your own Templar analogies!

There are certain characters in Game of Thrones – the brooding, military types – who could easily have been Templar knights in real life. Not just Jon Snow! If you have identified any Templar or other historical influences, then feel free to comment.